+1
make it an exciting place and I will buy full season tickets.
I will not pay their full prices to sit in a morgue.
Hawkeye-Carver Arena simply fails to offer the same home court advantage that other Big Ten arenas offer because it isn't as loud or as intimidating as other arenas. Yes, Carver-Hawkeye Arena is loud when it is packed and something exciting is going on on the court. But, it isn't very loud when the Arena is less than full, and/or the Hawks are not competitive on the court. The lack of volume wasn't particularly noticeable when Carver-Hawkeye was younger because the arena was always full and the team always competitive. But, even then there were times when you could hear a pin drop during breaks in the action.
Roy Carver, who donated the lion's share of the money for the building, was more of a wrestling fan than a basketball fan. Because of this, Hawkeye-Carver was actually built more to accommodate wrestling, than basketball. Specifically, the base of the bowl is far bigger than it would need to be for basketball, because it was built so that it could hold enough wrestling mats to host an NCAA wrestling tournament.
The consequence of the base of the bowl being so much bigger than it needs to be is that the permanent seats (i.e., the fans) are much further away from the court than at most other arenas. Yes, we deal with this by putting several rows of glorified folding chairs between the permanent seating and the court, but folding chairs (unlike permanent seats that are affixed, of course, into some sort of material that doesn't let the noise escape--like concrete) don't hold in the noise. With the permanent seats so far from the court, far more noise escapes than at other arenas. I haven't been to every Big Ten arena, but I can't think of another arena where the permanent seating (affixed, of course, into some material--typically concrete-- that noise bounces off of) begins so far away from the court.
Then, in most every arena that I can think of, the sound is kept in the building by the ceiling, thus increasing the decibel level. At Carver, nothing keeps the noise from going over the top of the seating into the concourse that circles the top of the arena. Finally, (unless they have recently changed this), there is not even a hard surface ceiling over center court. There is some sort of material that lets sound escape--I am not sure if this is to improve the acoustics or the ventilation. In any event, it does seem to help the acoustics, as often time in Carver you can literally hear a pin drop.
Carver is a great place to watch an NCAA Wrestling Championship, or even a concert (the acoustics are great), but the building does not offer nearly as much of a home court advantage in basketball as it should. I remember going to games at the Fieldhouse and it was so loud my ears would literally ring for 30 minutes after the game. I have never experienced that at Carver.
If I were in charge of updating Carver, this is what I would do. First, it is my understanding that there is some reason that it isn't likely that Carver would ever hold an NCAA championship again. So, I would remove the existing cement at the bottom of the bowl and lower the bowl by several feet. This is exactly what Ohio State did at "The Horseshoe" maybe ten years ago, when they removed the athletic track that went around the football field and wanted to bring the first rows of seating much, much closer to the field.
Lowering the bowl would allow several rows of new permanent seating that would angle down to just a few feet from courtside. Of couse, this would also add one to two thousand new seats (that we don't really need right now.) So, I would remove the top three or four rows of the seating and build a row of sky boxes around the top of the bowl. The sky boxes could be leased to raise money to pay for some or all of the project. Furthermore, the sky boxes would have the added benefit of retaining sound in the bowl by not letting the home crowd noise escape into the concourse.
If my project was undertaken and completed it would greatly increase the sound levels inside the arena, and greatly improve our home court advantage.
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While we are on the subject, our athletics administration has made the noise, or lack thereof, even worse by moving the students away from the side of the court to the "end zone." Financially, this move made some sense when we had more people wanting (and willing to pay top dollar for) tickets than we had good seats to offer. Of course, by moving students away from the action, the athletics administration diminished the excitement in the arena by a notch or two, which had the ironic effect of reducing the demand for the seats that the students were moved out of.
Anyway, today, when we have far more seats in the arena than bodies to fill them, there is no excuse for not moving students back to the side of the court where they can do their part in helping to ramp up the excitement level at home games.
